She stopped walking. “What did you just say?”
“I seem to remember you telling me that you were born in England, too, but that you and your mom moved here to live when you were really little. So, you used to pretend you were secretly an English princess and The Downs was your castle.”
She paused for a moment then shook her head. “I can’t believe I told you that.”
If anything, she sounded disappointed with herself. But why? They’d talked for hours during those four days last summer. She’d told him all sorts of things about herself. He in turn had confessed stuff about himself that nobody else knew. Like how he’d decided he was never going to have a wife or family.
“I was one when I moved in here actually,” she said. “We were pretty broke. My father left us a couple of weeks before Christmas and my mom had no way to pay the rent without him. The British expression is ‘he did a runner,’ so for the longest time I thought he’d literally leaped out a window and ran. Our flight landed Christmas Eve. We were the first two wanderers to be welcomed at Christmas Eve at The Downs.”
He followed Piper past a towering woodpile, through a small back door and into the garage. His eyes ran over racks of ice-hockey equipment. A kayak, canoe and two surfboards lay on beams above their heads, and there was camping equipment on wall shelves. Steel-toed hiking boots hung on a peg by the door, next to two pairs of boxing gloves, some climbing gear and what looked like a heavy wool cloak. All of the gear looked high quality, well loved and as if it hadn’t been touched in ages.
“So, if you keep the bed-and-breakfast open over Christmas, when do you take your own holidays?”
“I don’t really.” She pulled off her coat, then pushed her foggy glasses up onto the top of her head. “The Downs is open and running 365 days a year.”
Okay, he heard what she was saying, but there was something wrong with this picture. They were standing in a garage surrounded by incredible sports equipment. Sure, living in the Niagara region meant she could probably get in a bit of skating or cross-country skiing. But there were only so many times a person could hit the same patch of earth before wanting to try something new. And she could hardly surf or camp without taking a day off.
“Yes, but the whole reason we met is because you were on holiday on Manitoulin Island this past summer—”
“No, I was on the island for four days while my uncle was here helping movers pack up their things so they could move into the seniors’ home. My aunt’s health is poor, and a friend of hers who lived on the island invited her to stay for a few days. She wasn’t able to make the trip alone so I went with her.” She shrugged. “I’m going to need to run this place nonstop at capacity if I have any hope of starting the renovations by this summer. Even once they’re done, my uncle and aunt are going to need me around on a daily basis. Like I said, they have health problems.”
“Okay, but what kind of health problems?”
“My uncle has arthritis in his hands and arms. Not too bad, but he’s also seventy-two. My aunt’s a lot younger but she has mobility problems. She needs help doing things and getting places.” She wiped her glasses on her shirt and then slid them back on. But she still wasn’t looking at him. “If it’s okay with you, I’d rather not go into it right now.”
He ran his hand through his hair. Why did it feel as if this conversation was one wrong sentence away from turning into an argument? His sister’s anxiety disorder had kept him from pursuing his own dreams for way too long, so he should be the last person to judge anyone else’s commitment to family. It was definitely time for a subject change. He looked around the garage and spotted a small tractor by the wall with a snowplow on the front. “Nice piece of machinery. I’m guessing you clear your own snow?”
“Always. I also rake my own leaves in the fall and mow my own lawn in the summer.”
“Well, how about I plow the driveway and hill, while you call the police?”
She opened the kitchen door, pulled a key chain off the wall and tossed it to him. “Thanks. I’m also going to call my uncle and aunt, and the mechanic about your truck.”
“Great. Tell him I have insurance but I’m happy to pay out of pocket if that speeds things up. Anything I can do to get out of here faster.”
“Will do.” She walked into the kitchen.
Benjamin opened the garage door and stared out at the dark, snowy night. What was it with Piper? There was this weird tension between them that he couldn’t get his head around.
He’d told himself that when the time came to leave Canada, he’d do his best to make peace with everyone he left behind. But how could he make peace with Piper if he didn’t even know what he’d done wrong?
* * *
The steady clacking sound of fingers on a typewriter echoed through The Downs, like some kind of robust combination of music and water torture. Tobias Kasper wrote books on tactical warfare and was the kind of guest who treated the entirety of The Downs as an extension of his suite. Right now, the short, rotund middle-aged man sat in the middle of the living room, sporting a paisley bow tie and the kind of vest that some people called a waistcoat. He was pounding the keys of a machine that had to be at least sixty years old.
Piper nodded to him politely and closed the kitchen door. The Downs’s galley kitchen was much smaller than she would’ve liked, while the living room was huge, with an old brick fireplace and a huge wooden staircase leading to a sweeping second-floor balcony. When it came time to renovate, they’d be knocking down the wall between the two rooms. But right now, she was thankful for something to muffle the noise.
Her nerves were frayed enough as it was. She’d thought her heart was going to leap into her throat when Benjamin asked if he could take a suite for the night, and it finally hit her that he’d be staying around a little while longer. Benjamin had absolutely no idea the effect he had on her. And he was never going to know.
The phone began to ring. Piper was about to let it ring through to the answering machine, when her gaze caught the name on the display: Silver Halls Retirement Home. She grabbed the phone. “Hello?”
“Piper, honey?” It was Aunt Cass.
Piper smiled. “Hi, Aunt Cass. I see you finally managed to get a turn on the landline phone.”
Laughter trickled down the line. “I was about to use my cell phone. But your uncle started going on about saving minutes and I didn’t know if you’d gotten my text.”
Piper’s sparkling, vibrant, sixty-three year old aunt was nine years younger than Piper’s uncle, and so very young at heart. Aunt Cass hadn’t wanted to do anything even close to retire when persistent, unexplained numbness in her legs and then her arms forced her and Uncle Des to move out of The Downs into the only available rental place in town where everything was accessible on the ground floor.
“I’ve got an appointment for more tests at the hospital in Niagara Falls on January 12,” her aunt informed her.
Piper grabbed a pen and wrote it on the calendar. “No problem. I’ll be able to drive you.”
What kind of health problems? Benjamin had asked the question so casually, as if the answer was as simple as a sprained ankle or chicken pox. It had taken everything inside her not to groan, “We don’t know! That’s the problem!” She wasn’t even sure when her aunt’s limbs first stopped cooperating with her brain, like a frustrated marionette with intermittent strings. But after sudden numbness in her legs sent Aunt Cass tumbling down the stairs into the living room last summer, a broken arm and nasty bruises had woken them all up to the reality that their lives were going to change. Since then it had been a string of doctors, tests and possible diagnoses like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease. And prayers. Lots of prayers.
Piper ran her hand along her neck. It was tender. Now she was about to tell them something that